Doppelgänger Read Online Free PDF Page A

her skirt and collapsed to the floor, fearing at first that the hideous dead thing hanging in the entryway was attacking her; she remembered little more.
    She did not think she had been unconscious, but in the next moment of which she was aware Anine found herself sitting up in a large comfortable bed, gas lights glowing softly around her, and a woman with a kind pleasant face and gray hair was spooning her soup from a bowl with a gilt-painted rim. She did not recognize the woman, but she did look familiar; she had Julian’s beautiful sea-green eyes.
    â€œThere, I told you the soup would rekindle your light,” said the woman. “I used to make this for Julian and Sarah when they were sick as children.”
    Recognition flooded back to her. Lucretia . Julian’s aunt . She’d been at the wedding. She raised Julian and his sister after their mother died. This must have been her house. Anine had never been there, but Julian mentioned that she lived up on Lexington Avenue.
    â€œWhere’s my husband?” Anine asked, after a few more spoonfuls of soup.
    â€œHe’s still at the police station.”
    Anine grasped Lucretia’s wrist as the spoon, full of chicken soup, thrust toward her again. “I’m all right. I can eat by myself.”
    â€œYou’ve had quite a shock,” said Lucretia. But after a look from Anine she surrendered the bowl and the spoon to her.
    While she ate it Lucretia stood, smoothing out the skirt of her summer evening dress, and then busied herself setting right the glazed porcelain knickknacks on the mantel over the fireplace where a flame gently crackled. “You and Julian are welcome to stay for as long as you need to,” she said brightly. Then, her voice lower and more somber, she remarked: “Awful thing. Awful . I tell you that I’d need a good long spell of taking the waters at Saratoga to recover from a shock like that. I’ve recommended just that to Julian. I hope he listens to me for once.”
    Anine did not feel especially weak or sick, but she knew that if she tried to rise from the bed of Lucretia’s guest room the woman—and her maid, who came to check on her frequently—would simply not be able to believe that she wasn’t completely weak and prostrate from shock. To avoid that argument she elected to stay in bed. Julian remained out until late in the evening. Anine sat up in bed, trying to pass the time reading a Walter Scott romance, but she couldn’t concentrate on the words. Bradbury’s rotting visage seemed to leer at her out of the pages.
    At half-past-ten the wheels of the carriage finally clattered up to the house and Julian entered. Anine heard him speaking to his aunt downstairs, and that was followed by the creaking of the stairs under his shoes. He entered the guest room reticently, perhaps half-expecting Anine to be asleep. She smiled, grateful at last of the company, and set the book aside on the bed.
    â€œI spoke to my father,” said Julian, his first words upon entering. “I’ve arranged for us to stay at his cottage in Newport for the next few weeks. We’ll leave from here on the morning train.”
    Great. More traveling . She was sick to death of trains. But she didn’t protest; the alternative was either to stay here or go back to the house so soon after the horror. Neither option appealed to her. “Fine.” She motioned to the chair next to the bed. “Come sit with me a while.”
    Julian dropped his lanky frame into the armchair. It was improper to smoke a cigar in a lady’s bedchamber, and he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. Ultimately he set them on his thighs. He said nothing.
    It’s up to me to mention it? Anine was exasperated. “You spoke to the police?” she said.
    â€œThey went over the house pretty thoroughly. Bradbury’s personal effects were neatly packed in the servants’ quarters in the